I got off the phone with local MPP Caroline Mulroney earlier this week and quickly wrote up her breaking news that engineering and design fieldwork had begun on the Bradford Bypass, and public consultations would be starting up in a “matter of weeks”.
As my editor texted me to say “this is huge” news, I got back to the rest of the recording of our conversation. Mulroney had a lot more to say about her plans for our community.
With two years under her belt as York-Simcoe MPP, Caroline Mulroney has wide-ranging areas she is focusing on.
She specifically outlined one additional piece of coming good news, saying, “Plans are still underway to improve the Bradford GO station with additional parking, redesigning the bus loop and some other improvements. So, the procurement, that contract is still in market, but we know that the station needs to be improved and there are plans to deliver that.”
She expects to be able to announce this work formally before the end of the year, with work starting later this year or early next year.
That is great news for commuters. The old train station was restored from a heritage perspective several years ago, but the station more broadly needs significant work to be the commuter hub it has become as the town grows.
Mulroney also said “I am thrilled that Bradford was chosen as the location for a new school, given that Bradford is growing and more and more families are choosing to move to Bradford; we need to continue to support our families.”
She commits as well to continue to “support farmers, making sure life is affordable, delivering broadband [internet], a major issue for people across Bradford, but especially the marsh and more rural areas.”
With an announcement recently by her colleague Simcoe County MPPs Andrea Khanjin and Jill Dunlop, committing nearly $600,000 to fund projects to protect Lake Simcoe, Mulroney said we need to “make sure we keep Lake Simcoe clean and protected, and that’s something I’m working on with my colleagues across the lake.”
“There are a lot of issues and some that I can foresee today and some that will come up in the future,” she said – too true in a time of global pandemic.
This all paints a picture of an MPP who is a senior figure in the provincial government working hard to deliver for her riding.
A few years ago, I woke up somewhere over Ireland on a flight into Heathrow airport in London and realized that the glamorous woman a row or two ahead of me was oddly familiar. Then, her husband got up, and I realized it was Mila and Brian Mulroney.
I eventually caught up to them, jetlagged, just before customs. We took a selfie together, and I blurted out that he was my favourite prime minister because he got big things done.
His daughter has inherited that same knack for getting things done.
